TBR and Huawei Jointly Release White Paper on Maintenance Evolution and NFV Assurance

[Shenzhen, China, Nov 18, 2016] TBR, a leading technology consulting firm and Huawei have released a white paper on ‘Network Maintenance Evolution and Best Practices for NFV Assurance.’ The white paper points out that the growing adoption of NFV architecture by service providers will require new approaches to network maintenance.

The paper notes that NFV assurance requirements will accelerate the evolution of maintenance to incorporate the use of ‘smart’ techniques which will use increased automation. NFV enables real time services that require new methods to achieve assurance and greater efficiency in maintenance. The new architecture also raises several questions, including – ‘how do operators prevent problems using active maintenance methods?’, ‘how do they detect abnormal events faster?’, ‘how do they deal with issues in a multi-vendor environment?’ and ‘how do they reduce the impact of infrastructure updates?’

The white paper analysis, which is based on interviews with service providers adopting NFV, also highlights the advent of new solutions for NFV assurance, such as a ‘recover first, resolve next’ methodology, which detects potential problems in real time, immediately recovering the service to ensure high availability and then analyzing cross-layer root causes of critical issues.

Then based on daily maintenance information, the process evaluates the robustness of the system and continuously optimizes the network. Service providers can also benefit from selecting a vendor as a single interface to ensure service continuity in a multi-vendor environment, therefore improving problem processing efficiency. In the white paper, Huawei’s NFV Solutions Support Services are described as an example that provides new solutions to deal with NFV maintenance challenges.

"NFV transformation will accelerate the evolution of maintenance services as the techniques of proactive and real-time service assurance will support the orchestration and automation needed to tackle NFV assurance challenges," said Michael Sullivan, TBR Executive Analyst. "TBR believes that Huawei’s suite of solutions for NFV assurance hold promise to help address the crucial network assurance challenges service providers face with NFV transformation."

Zhao Yongjun, General Manager of Customer Support Service, Global Technical Services, Huawei said, "Huawei has a deep understanding of telecommunications service areas and have accumulated a lot of ICT and NFV system maintenance experience. Together with Huawei Open Lab's powerful verification ability, we can help carriers to achieve efficient maintenance and build high available NFV networks."

“By the end of 2016 Q3, HUAWEI has been involved in more than 90 commercial NFV projects, and the rich experience in project practice will effectively ensure the carriers’ NFV maintenance transformation.”

The whitepaper can be downloaded from this link: http://carrier.huawei.com/~/media/CNBG/Downloads/Solutions/Operation-reconstruction/Network maintenance evolution and best practices for NFV assurance.pdf